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Friday, May 18, 2012

Making Spinnerbaits

A couple years ago I bought a kit to make spinnerbaits from Cabela's. At the time I was using spinnerbaits a lot and at $3-4 a piece, snagging them was getting expensive quick. I thought to myself that they would be easy and much cheaper to make. I stumbled upon the kit on Cabela's website and decided to give it a try. The kit included parts to make 48 spinnerbaits and only cost $36.99, making the cost of one spinnerbait only 77 cents, much cheaper than buying them individually assembled. Of course this doesn't include the cost of shipping so in the end they probably end up costing around a dollar a piece. You can find the kit here. There is also some optional colored tubing that you can buy to add to your hooks for $3.99. The assembly process is pretty easy, the only tools required are some pliers and wire cutters.

Kit contents, red tubing, and tools

The first step of assembly is choosing a treble hook from the three sizes in the kit and adding some optional tubing to the shaft of the hook.

Next slide the hook onto the preformed wire. Then select a chrome or gold body and slide it onto both ends of the wire using pliers to pinch the wire together to get the short end.

With the pliers, bend the short end of the wire to serve as a mark to cut the excess. Remove the body piece and use wire cutters to snip the excess wire off just below where you made the bend.

Re add the body, using pliers to pinch the wire together, the short side of the wire should slide flush with the body now. Now add beads as desired, and the clevis with an appropriate blade with the bowl side of the blade facing towards the body.

Grab the wire with the pliers about a quarter inch from the clevis and form a loop with the wire around the pliers. Make sure there is enough play for the blade to spin but not enough for the body to pop off the short end of the wire. After forming the loop wrap the wire around itself about two complete turns. Finally cut the excess wire and the new spinnerbait is complete.

The kit contains 4 size blades in both chrome and gold. Below are 3 completed baits in 3 different sizes all chrome.

Spinnerbaits are definitely one of my favorite baits. The flashy spinning action can draw in strikes from a wide variety of fish. My best multi-species day of fishing actually came from using one of these spinnerbaits exclusively, that day I caught bluegill, smallmouth, crappie, gar, channel cats, and drum all in one evening at the creek with a spinnerbait, and none of these fish were snagged. Personally my favorite locations for using spinnerbaits are in creeks for smallmouth, in the ohio river and tributaries for hybrid stripers, and in ponds for largemouth. This versatility makes a spinnerbait a top weapon in my arsenal of lures.